BET President Hosts Event To Improve Black Women’s Image

Someone alert the Irony Police, please. I’m sure BET President and CEO Debra Lee has the best of intentions in hosting this event – or at least wants to appear as though she does – but the entire concept warrants a major side-eye. Here’s a crazy idea: Maybe if BET stopped enthusiastically airing and promoting things like Frankie & Neffe or the “Tip Drill” video, these “leadership talks” wouldn’t be necessary! But why would BET disrupt their profit margins and viewership numbers when they can just throw together events like this and use them to talk out both sides of their mouth? For more on NewsOne’s thoughts about BET, click here. – NewsOne Staff

She hated the oversexed, booty-shaking music videos. She thought the programming objectified black women. She would bad-mouth the network with her girlfriends.

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This week, the author and entrepreneur joined 130 other successful black women — influential in politics, entertainment and nonprofits — at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel to talk about portrayals of black women in the media, the problems facing black girls in urban schools, the state of the black family and other weighty issues.

The sponsor of this gathering of African American alpha women: BET.

“I’ve been invited to many events by BET, but this is the first one I have attended,” McDaniel, who lives in Fairfax, said to the cable network’s chief executive Debra Lee at one of the event’s workshops. “I didn’t like a lot of the messages and images that were coming out. But we have the power to change that.”